James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.
Title: James and the Giant Peach.
Author: Roald Dahl (illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert)
Genre: Fiction, literature, children's lit, YA, adventure.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1961.
Summary: Were the green, glowing crystals the little man gave James really magic? Maybe, but it was magic lost to James when he tripped and spilled the crystals by the old peach tree. Now it looked like he'd never escape his hideous aunts. But what was happening to that peach at the top of the tree? It was growing bigger and bigger... it was as big as a house! And when James crawled inside, he met a houseful of friends: giant Grasshopper, Ladybug, Centipede, and more. Then with one snip of the stem, the peach was rolling away-and marvelous things started happening...
My rating: 9/10.
My review:
♥ Then, one day, James's mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.
Now this, as you can well imagine, was a rather nasty experience for two such gentle parents. But in the long run it was far nastier for James that it was for them. Their troubles were all over in a jiffy. They were dead and gone in thirty-five seconds flat. Poor James, on the other hand, was still very much alive, and all at once he found himself alone and frightened in a vast unfriendly world. The lovely house by the seaside had to be sold immediately, and the little boy, carrying nothing but a small suitcase containing a pair of pajamas and a toothbrush, was sent away to live with two animals.
Their names were Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and I am sorry to say that they were both really horrible people.
♥
♥ For now, there came a morning when something rather peculiar happened to him. And this thing, which as I say was only rather peculiar, soon caused a second thing to happen which was very peculiar. And then the very peculiar thing, in its own turn, caused a really fantastically peculiar thing to occur.
♥ "Take a look, my dear," he said, opening the bag and tilting it toward James. Inside it, James could see a mass of tiny green things that looked like little stones or crystals, each one about the size of a grain of rice. These were extraordinarily beautiful, and there was a strange brightness about them, a sort of luminous quality that made them glow and sparkle in the most wonderful way.
"Listen to them!" the old man whispered. "Listen to them move!"
James stared into the bag, and sure enough there was a faint rustling sound coming up from inside it, and then he noticed that all the thousands of little green things were slowly, very very slowly stirring about and moving over each other as though they were alive.
"There's more power and magic in those things in there than in all the rest of the world put together," the old man said softly.
"But-but-what are they?" James murmured, finding his voice at last. "Where do they come from?"
"Ah-ha," the old man whispered. "You'd never guess that!" He was crouching a little now and pushing his face still closer and closer to James until the top of his long nose was actually touching the skin on James's forehead. Then suddenly he jumped back and began waving his stick madly in the air. "Crocodile tongues!" he cried. "One thousand long slimy crocodile tongues boiled up in the skull of a dead witch for twenty days and nights with the eyeballs of a lizard! Add the fingers of a young monkey, the gizzard of a pig, the beak of a green parrot, the juice of a porcupine, and three spoonfuls of sugar. Stew for another week, and then let the moon do the rest!"
All at once, he pushed the white paper bag into James's hands, and said, "Here! You take it! It's yours!"
James Henry Trotter stood there clutching the bag and staring at the old man.
"And now," the old man said, "all you've got to do is this. Take a large jug of water, and pour all the little green things into it. Then, very slowly, one by one, add ten hairs from your own head. That sets them off! It gets them going! In a couple of minutes the water will begin to froth and bubble furiously, and as soon as that happens you must quickly drink it all down, the whole jugful, in one gulp. And then, my dear, you will feel it churning and boiling in your stomach, and steam will start coming out of your mouth, and immediately after that, marvelous things will start happening to you, fabulous, unbelievable things-and you will never be miserable again in your life. Because you are miserable, aren't you? You needn't tell me! I know all about it! Now, off you go and do exactly as I say. And don't whisper a word of this to those two horrible aunts of yours! Not a word! And don't let those green things in there get away from you either! Because if they do escape, then they will be working their magic upon somebody else instead of upon you! And that isn't what you want at all, is it, my dear? Whoever they meet first, be it bug, insect, animal, or tree, that will be the one who gets the full power of their magic! So hold the bag tight! Don't tear the paper! Off you go! Hurry up! Don't wait! Now's the time! Hurry!"
With that, the old man turned away and disappeared into the bushes.
♥ James decided that this was most certainly not a time to be disagreeable, so he crossed the room to where the Centipede was sitting and knelt down beside him.
"Thank you so much," the Centipede said. "You are very kind."
"You have a lot of boots," James murmured.
"I have a lot of legs," the Centipede answered proudly. "And a lot of feet. One hundred, to be exact."
"There he goes again!" the Earthworm cried, speaking for the first time. "He simply cannot stop telling lies about his legs! he doesn't have anything like a hundred of them! He's only got forty-two! The trouble is that most people don't bother to count them. They just take this word. And anyway, there is nothing marvelous, you know, Centipede, about having a lot of legs."
"Poor fellow," the Centipede said, whispering in James's ear. "He's blind. He can't see how splendid I look."
"In my opinion," the Earthworm said, "the really marvelous thing is to have no legs at all and to be able to walk just the same."
"You call that walking!" cried the Centipede. "You're a slitherer, that's all you are! you just slither along!"
"I glide," said the Earthworm primly.
"You are a slimy beast," answered the Centipede.
"I am not a slimy beast," the Earthworm said. "I am a useful and much loved creature. Ask any gardener you like. And as for you..."
"I am a pest!" the Centipede announced, grinning broadly and looking round the room for approval.
"He is so proud of that," the Ladybug said, smiling at James. "Though for the life of me I cannot understand why."
.."I refuse to sleep in my boots!" the Centipede cried. "How many more are there to come off, James?"
"I think I've done about twenty so far," James told him.
"Then that leaves eighty to go," the Centipede said.
"Twenty-two, not eighty! shrieked the Earthworm. "He's lying again."
The Centipede roared with laughter.
"Stop pulling the Earthworm's leg," the Ladybug said.
This sent the Centipede into hysterics. "Pulling his leg!" he cried, wriggling with glee and pointing at the Earthworm. "Which leg am I pulling? You tell me that?"
James decided that he rather liked the Centipede. He was obviously a rascal, but what a change it was to hear somebody laughing once in a while. He had never heard Aunt Sponge or Aunt Spiker laughing aloud in all the time he had been with them.
♥ The Ladybug, who was obviously a kind and gentle creature, came over and stood beside him. "In case you don't know it," she said, "we are about to depart forever from the top of this ghastly hill that we've all been living on for so long. We are about to roll away inside this great big beautiful peach to a land of... of... of... to a land of-"
"Of what?" asked James.
"Never you mind," said the Ladybug.
♥ "We're off!" the others cried. "We're off!"
"The journey begins!" shouted the Centipede.
"And who knows where it will end," muttered the Earthworm, "if you have anything to do with it. It can only mean trouble."
"Nonsense," said the Ladybug. "We are now about to visit the most marvelous places and see the most wonderful things! Isn't that so, Centipede?"
"There is no knowing what we shall see!" cried the Centipede.
"We may see a Creature with forty-nine heads
Who lives in the desolate snow,
And whenever he catches a cold (which he dreads)
He has forty-nine noses to blow.
"We may see the venomous Pink-Spotted Scrunch
Who can chew up a man with one bite.
It likes to eat five of them roasted for lunch
And eighteen for its supper at night.
"We may see a Dragon, and nobody knows
That we won't see a Unicorn there.
We may see a terrible Monster with toes
Growing out of the tufts of his hair.
"We may see the sweet little Biddy-Bright Hen
So playful, so kind and well-bred;
And such beautiful eggs! You just boil them and then
They explode and they blow off your head.
"A Gnu and a Gnocerous surely you'll see
And that gnormous and gnorrible Gnat
Whose sting when it stings you goes in at the knee
And comes out through the top of your hat.
"We may even get lost and be frozen by frost.
We may die in an earthquake or tremor.
Or nastier still, we may even be tossed
On the horns of a furious Dilemma.
"But who cares! Let us go from this horrible hill!
Let us roll! Let us bowl! Let us plunge!
Let's go rolling and bowling and spinning until
We're away from old Spiker and Sponge!"
♥ Good gracious me! What's that awful noise?"
Both women swung around to look.
The noise, of course, had been caused by the giant peach crashing through the fence that surrounded it, and now, gathering speed every second, it came rolling across the garden toward the place where Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker were standing.
They gaped. They screamed. They started to run. They panicked. They both got in each other's way. They began pushing and jostling, and each one of them was thinking only about saving herself. Aunt Sponge, the fat one, tripped over a box that she'd brought along to keep the money in, and fell flat on her face. Aunt Spiker immediately tripped over Aunt Sponge and came down on top of her. They both lay on the ground, fighting and clawing and yelling and struggling frantically to get yup again, but before they could do this, the mighty peach was upon them.
There was a crunch.
And then there was silence.
The peach rolled on. And behind it, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker lay ironed out upon the grass as flat and thin and lifeless as a couple of paper dolls cut out of a picture book.
♥ And now the peach had broken out of the garden and was over the edge of the hill, rolling and bouncing down the steep slope at a terrific pace. Faster and faster and faster it went, and the crowds of people who were climbing up the hill suddenly caught sight of this terrible monster plunging down upon them and they screamed and scattered to right and left as it went hurling by.
At the bottom of the hill it charged across the road, knocking over a telegraph pole and flattening two parked automobiles as it went by.
Then it rushed madly across about twenty fields, breaking down all the fences and hedges in its path. It went right through the middle of a herd of fine Jersey cows, and then through a flock of sheep, and then through a paddock full of horses, and then through a yard full of pigs, and soon the whole countryside was a seething mass of animals stampeding in all directions.
The peach was still going at a tremendous speed with no sign of slowing down, and about a mile farther on it came to a village.
Down the main street of the village it rolled, with people leaping frantically out of its path right and left, and at the end of the street it went crashing right through the wall of an enormous building and out the other side, leaving two gaping round holes in the brickwork.
This building apprehended to be a famous factory where they made chocolate, and almost at once a great river of warm melted chocolate came pouring out of the holes in the factory wall. A minute later, this brown sticky mess was flowing through every street in the village, oozing under the doors of houses and into people's shops and gardens. Children were wading in it up to their knees, and some were even trying to swim in it, and all of them were sucking it into their mouths in great greedy gulps and shrieking with joy.
But the peach rushed on across the countryside-on and on and on, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Cowsheds, stables, pigsties, barns, bungalows, hayricks, anything that got in its way went toppling over like a nine-pin. An old man sitting quietly beside a stream had his fishing rod whisked out of his hands as it went dashing by, and a woman called Daisy Entwistle was standing so close to it as it passed that she had the skin taken off the top of her long nose.
Would it ever stop?
Why should it? A round object will always keep on rolling as long as it is on a downhill slope, and in this case the land sloped downhill all the way until it reached the ocean-the same ocean that James had begged his aunts to be allowed to visit the day before.
Well, perhaps he was going to visit it now. The peach was rushing closer and closer to it every second, and closer also to the towering white cliffs that came first.
These cliffs are the most famous in the whole of England, and they are hundreds of feet high. Below them, the sea is deep and cold and hungry. Many ships have been swallowed up and lost forever on this part of the coast, and all the men who were in them as well.
♥ Everything and all of them were being rattled around like peas inside an enormous rattle that was being rattled by a mad giant who refused to stop. To make it worse, something went wrong with the Glow-worm's lighting system, and the room was in pitchy darkness. There were screams and yells and curses and cries of pain, and everything kept going round and round, and once James made a frantic grab at some thick bars sticking out from the wall only to find that they were a couple of the Centipede's legs. "Let go, you idiot!" shouted the Centipede, kicking himself free, and James was promptly flung across the room into the Old-Green-Grasshopper's horny lap. Twice he got tangled up in Miss Spider's legs (a horrid business), and toward the end, the poor Earthworm, who was cracking himself like a whip every time he flew through the air from one side of the room to the other, coiled himself around James's body in a panic and refused to unwind.
Oh, it was a frantic and terrible trip!
♥ "..Everything will be all right in the end."
"What absolute nonsense!" cries the Earthworm. "Nothing is ever all right in the end, and well you know it!"
"Poor Earthworm," the Ladybug said, whispering in James's ear. "He loves to make everything into a disaster. He hates to be happy. He is only happy when he is gloomy. No isn't that odd? But then, I suppose just being an Earthworm is enough to make a person pretty gloomy, don't you agree?"
.."What are you looking so worried about, Earthworm?" the Centipede asked. "What's the problem?"
"The problem is..." the Earthworm said, "the problem is... well, the problem is that there is no problem!"
♥ "I've eaten many strange and scrumptious dishes in my time,
Like jellied gnats and dandyprats and earwigs cooked in slime,
And mice with rice-they're really nice
When roasted in their prime.
(But don't forget to sprinkle them with just a pinch of grime.)
"I've eaten fresh mudburgers by the greatest cooks there are,
And scrambled dregs and stinkbugs' eggs and hornets stewed in tar,
And pails of snails and lizards' tails,
And beetles by the jar.
(A beetle is improved by just a splash of vinegar.)
"I often eat boiled slobbages. They're grand when served beside
Minced doodlebugs and curried slugs. And have you ever tried
Mosquitoes' toes and wampfish roes
Most delicately fried?
(The only trouble is they disagree with my inside.)
"I'm mad for crispy wasp-strings on a piece of buttered toast,
And pickled spines of porcupines. And then a gorgeous toast,
Of dragon's flesh, well hung, not fresh-
It costs a buck at most,
(And comes to you in barrels if you order it by post.)
"I crave the tasty tentacles of octopi for tea
I like hot-dogs, I LOVE hot-frogs, and surely you'll agree
A plate of spoil with engine oil's
A super recipe.
(I hardly need to mention that it's practically free.)
"For dinner on my birthday shall I tell you what I chose:
Hot noodles made from poodles on a slice of garden hose-
And a rather smelly jelly
Made of armadillo's toes.
(The jelly is delicious, but you have to hold your nose.)
"Now comes," the Centipede declared, "the burden of my speech:
These goods are rare beyond compare-some are right out of reach;
But there's no doubt I'd go without
A million plates of each
For one small mite,
One tiny bite
Of this FANTASTIC PEACH!"
♥ And now came the big moment. Quickly, the five hundred and second seagull was caught and harnessed to the peach-stem...
And then suddenly...
But slowly...
Majestically...
Like some fabulous golden balloon...
With all the seagulls straining at the strings above...
The giant peach rose up dripping out of the water and began climbing toward the heavens.
♥ ..she quickly produced a length of silk thread and attached the end of it to the peach stem. "I'll be back in a jiffy," she said, and then she walked calmly over to the edge of the peach and jumped off, paying out the thread behind her as she fell.
The others crowded anxiously around the place where she had gone over.
"Wouldn't it be dreadful if the thread broke," the Ladybug said.
There was a rather long silence.
♥ "But there were hundreds of sharks around us!"
"They churned the water into a froth!"
"We saw their great mouths opening and shutting!"
"I don't care what you saw," Miss Spider answered. "They certainly didn't do much damage to the peach."
"Then why did we start sinking?" the Centipede asked.
"Perhaps we didn't start sinking," the Old-Green-Grasshopper suggested. "Perhaps we were all so frightened that we simply imagined it."
This, in point of fact, was closer to the truth than any of them knew. A shark, you seem as an extremely long sharp nose, and its mouth is set very awkwardly underneath its face and a long way back. This makes it more or less impossible for it to get its teeth into a vast smooth curving surface such as the side of a peach. Even if the creature turns onto its back it still can't do it, because the nose always gets in the way. If you have ever seen a small dog trying to get its teeth into an enormous ball, then you will be able to imagine roughly how it was with the sharks and the peach.
♥ "Let's wave to them. Do you think they can see us?"
Neither James nor any of the others knew it, but the ship that was now passing beneath them was actually the Queen Mary sailing out of the English channel on her way to America. And on the bridge of the Queen Mary, the astonished Captain was standing with a group of his officers, all of them gaping at the great round ball hovering overhead.
"I don't like it," the Captain said.
"Nor do I," said the First Officer.
"Do you think it's following us?" said the Second Officer.
"I tell you I don't like it," murmured the Captain.
"It could be dangerous," the First Officer said.
"That's it!" cried the Captain. "It's a secret weapon! Holy cats! Send a message to the Queen at once! The country must be warned! And give me my telescope."
The First Officer handed the telescope to the Captain. The Captain put it to his eye.
"There's birds everywhere!" he cried. "The whole sky is teeming with birds! What in the world are they doing? And wait! Wait a second! There are people on it! I can see them moving! There's a-a-do I have this darned thing focused right? It looks like a little boy in short trousers! Yes, I can distinctly see a little boy in short trousers standing up there! And there's a-there's a-there's a-a-a-a sort of giant ladybug!"
"Now just a minute, Captain!" the First Officer said.
"And a colossal green grasshopper!"
"Captain!" the First Officer said sharply. "Captain, please!"
"And a mammoth spider!"
"Oh dear, he's been at the whisky again," whispered the Second Officer.
"And an enormous-a simply enormous centipede!" screamed the Captain.
"Call the Ship's Doctor," the First Officer said. "Our Captain is not well."
A moment later, the great round ball disappeared into a cloud, and the people in the ship never saw it again.
♥ And what a wonderful instrument the Old-Green-Grasshopper was playing upon. It was like a violin! It was almost exactly as though he were playing upon a violin!
The bow of the violin, the parer that moved, was his back leg. The strings of the violin, the part that made the sound, was the edge of his wing.
He was using only the top of his back leg (the thigh), and he was stroking this up and down against the edge of his wing with incredible skill, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, but always with the same easy flowing action. It was precisely the way a clever violinist would have used his bow; and the music came pouring out and filled the whole blue sky around them with magic melodies.
♥ "But do all grasshoppers play their music on violins, the same was as you do?" James asked him.
"No," he answered, "not all. If you want to know, I happen to be a "short-horned" grasshopper. I have two short feelers coming out of my head. Can you see them? There they are. They are quite short, aren't they? That's why they call me a "short-horn". And we "short-horns" are the only ones who play our music in the violin style, using a bow. My "long-horned" relatives, the ones who have long curvy feelers coming out of their heads, make their music simply by rubbing the edges of their two top wings together. They are not violinists, they are wing-rubbers. And a rather inferior noise these wing-rubbers produce, too, if I may say so. It sounds more like a banjo than a fiddle."
"How fascinating this all is!" cried James. "And to think that up until now I had never even wondered how a grasshopper made his sounds."
"My dear young fellow," the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, "there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that you haven't started wondering about yet. Where, for example, do you think that I keep my ears?"
"Your ears? Why, in your head, of course."
Everyone burst out laughing.
.."Well-I give up. Where do you keep them?"
"Right here," the Old-Green-Grasshopper said. "One on each side of my tummy."
"It's not true!"
"Of course it's true. What's so peculiar about that? You ought to see where my cousins the crickets and the katydids keep theirs."
"Where do they keep them?"
"In their legs. One in each front leg, just below the knee."
.."You're joking," James said. "Nobody could possibly have his ears in his legs."
"Why not?"
"Because... because it's ridiculous, that's why."
"You know what I think is ridiculous?" the Centipede said, grinning away as usual. "I don't mean to be rude, but I think it is ridiculous to have ears on the sides of one's head. It certainly looks ridiculous. You ought to take a peek in the mirror some day and see for yourself."
♥ "Well," the Earthworm said. "Next time you stand in a field or in a garden and look around you, then just remember this: that every grain of soil upon the surface of the land, every tiny little bit of soil upon the surface of the land, every tiny little bit of soil that you can see has actually passed through the body of an Earthworm during the last few years! Isn't that wonderful?"
"It's not possible!" said James.
"My dear boy, it's a fact."
"You mean you actually swallow spoil?"
"Like mad," the Earthworm said proudly, "In one and out the other."
"But what's the point?"
"What do you mean, what's the point?"
"Why do you do it?"
"We do it for the farmers. It makes the soil nice and light and crumbly so that things will grow well in it. If you really want to know, the farmers couldn't do without us. We are essential. We are vital. So it is only natural that the farmer should love us. He loves us even more, I believe, than he loves the Ladybug."
"The Ladybug!" said James, turning to look at her. "Do they love you, too?"
"I am told that they do," the Lady big answered modestly, blushing all over. "In fact, I understand that in some places the farmers love us so much that they go out and buy live Ladybugs by the sackful and take them home and set them free in their fields. They are very pleased when they have lots of Ladybugs in their fields."
"But why?" James asked.
"Because we gobble up all the nasty little insects that are gobbling up all the farmer's crops. It helps enormously, and we ourselves don't charge a penny for our services."
"I think you're wonderful," James told her. "Can I ask you one special question?"
"Please do."
"Well, is it really true that I can tell how old a Ladybug is by counting her spots?"
"Oh no, that's just a children's story," the Ladybug said. "We never change our spots. Some of us, of course, are born with more spots than others, but we never change them. The number of spots that a Ladybug has is simply a way of showing which branch of the family she belongs to. I, for example, as you can see for yourself, am a Nine-Spotted Ladybug. I am very lucky. It is a fine thing to be."
"It is, indeed," said James, gazing at the beautiful scarlet shell with the nine black spots on it.
"On the other hand," the Ladybug went on, "some of my less fortunate relatives have no more than two spots altogether on their shells! Can you imagine that? They are called Two-Spotted Ladybugs, and very common and ill-mannered they are, I regret to say. And then, of course, you have the Five-Spotted Ladybugs as well. They are much nicer than the Two-Spotted ones, although I myself find them a trifle too saucy for my taste."
"But they are all of them loved?" said James.
"Yes," the Ladybug answered quietly. "They are all of them loved."
♥ "But is it not very unlucky to kill a spider?" James inquired, looking around at the others.
"Of course it's unlucky to kiss a spider!" shouted the Centipede. "It's about the unluckiest thing anyone can do. Look what happened to Aunt Sponge after she'd done that! Bump! We all felt it, didn't we, as the peach went over her? Oh, what a lovely bump that must have been for you, Miss Spider!"
"It was very satisfactory," Miss Spider answered.
"Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire,
And as dry as a one, only drier.
She was so long and thin
If you carried her in
You could use her for poking the fire!
"I must do something quickly," she frowned.
"I want FAT. I want pound upon pound!
I must eat lots and lots
Of marshmallows and chocs
Till I start bulging out all around."
"Ah, yes," she announced, "I have sworn
That I'll alter my figure by dawn!"
Cried the peach with a snigger,
"I'LL alter your figure-
And ironed her out on the lawn!"
♥ "Once upon a time
When pigs were swine
And monkeys chewed tobacco
And hens took snuff
To make themselves tough
And the ducks said quack-quack-quacko,
And porcupines
Drank fiery wines
And goats ate tapioca
And Old Mother Hubbard
Got stuck in the c-"
♥ James Henry Trotter and his companions crouched close together on top of the peach as the night began closing in around them. Clouds like mountains towered high above their heads on all sides, mysterious, menacing, overwhelming. Gradually it grew darker and darker, and then a pale three-quarter moon came up over the tops of the clouds and cast an eerie light over the whole scene. The giant peach swayed gently from side to side as it floated along, and the hundreds of silky white strings going upward from its stem were beautiful in the moonlight. So also was the great flock of seagulls overhead.
There was not a sound anywhere. Traveling upon the peach was not in the least like traveling in an airplane. The airplane comes clattering and rearing through the sky, and whatever might be lurking secretly up there in the great cloud-mountains goes running for cover at its approach. That is why people who travel in airplanes never see anything.
♥ Once, as they drifted silently past a massive white cloud, they saw on the top of it a group of strange, tall, wispy-looking things that were about twice the height of ordinary men. They were not easy to see at first because they were almost as white as the cloud itself, but as the peach sailed closer, it became obvious that these "things" were actually living creatures-tall, wispy, wraithlike, shadowy, white creatures who looked as though they were made out of a mixture of cotton-wool and candyfloss and thin white hairs.
..The Cloud-Men were all standing in a group, and they were doing something peculiar with their hands. First, they would reach out (all of them at once) and grab handfuls of cloud. Then they would roll these handfuls of cloud in their fingers until they turned into what looked like large white marbles. Then they would toss the marbles to one side and quickly grab more buts of cloud and start over again.
It was all very silent and mysterious. The pile of marbles beside them kept growing larger and larger. Soon there was a truckload of them there at least.
..Then the watchers on the peach saw one of the Cloud-Men raising his long wispy arms above his head and they heard him shouting, "All right, boys! That's enough! Get the shovels!" And all the other Cloud-Men immediately let out a strange high-pitched whoop of joy and started jumping up and down and waving their arms in the air. Then they picked up enormous shovels and rushed over to the pile of marbles and began shoveling them as fast as they could over the side of the cloud, into space. "Down they go!" they chanted as they worked.
"Down they go!
Hail and snow!
Freezes and sneezes and noses will blow!"
"It's hailstones! whispered James excitedly. "They've been making hailstones and now they are showering them down onto the people in the world below!"
"Hailstones?" the Centipede said. "That's ridiculous! This is summertime. You don't have hailstones in summertime."
"They are practicing for the winter," James told him.
..But the Cloud-Men had no intention of stopping. James could see them rushing about on the cloud like a lot of huge hairy ghosts, picking up hailstones from the pile, dashing to the edge of the cloud, hurling the hailstones at the peach, dashing back again to get more, and then, when the pile of stones was all gone, they simply grabbed handfuls of cloud and made as many more as they wanted, and much bigger ones now, some of them as large as cannon balls.
..In the distance and directly ahead of them, they now saw a most extraordinary sight. It was a kind of arch, a colossal curvy-shaped thing that reached high up into the sky and came down again at both ends. The ends were resting upon a huge flat cloud that was as big as a desert.
.."That enormous arch-they seem to be painting it! They've got pots of paint and big brushes! You look!"
And he was quite right. The travelers were close enough now to see that this was exactly what the Cloud-Men were doing. They all had huge brushed in their hands and they were splashing the paint onto the great curvy arch in a frenzy of speed, so fast, in fact, that in a few minutes the whole of the arch became covered with the most glorious colors-reds, blues, greens, yellows, and purples.
"It's a rainbow!" everyone said at once. "They are making a rainbow!"
..Cloud after cloud went by on either side, all of them ghostly white in the moonlight, and several more times during the night the travelers caught glimpses of Cloud-Men moving around on the tops of these clouds, working their sinister magic upon the world below.
Once they passed a snow machine in operation, with the Cloud-Men turning the handle and a blizzard of snowflakes blowing out of the great funnel above. They saw the huge drums that were used for making thunder, and the Cloud-Men beating them furiously with long hammers. They saw the frost factories and the wind producers and the places where cyclones and tornados were manufactured and sent spinning down toward the Earth, and once, deep in the hollow of a large billowy cloud, they spotted something that could only have been a Cloud-Men's city. There were caves everywhere running into the cloud, and at the entrances to the caves the Cloud-Men's wives were crouching over little stoves with frying-pans in their hands, frying snowballs for their husbands' suppers. And hundreds of Cloud-Men's children were frisking about all over the place and shrieking with laughter and sliding down the billows of the cloud on toboggans.
♥ "It'll never come off," the Earthworm said brightly. "Our Centipede will never move again. He will turn into a statue and we shall be able to put him in the middle of the lawn with a bird-bath on the top of his head."
"We could try peeling him like a banana," the Old-Green-Grasshopper suggested.
"Or rubbing him with sandpaper," the Ladybug said.
"Now if he stuck out his tongue," the Earthworm said, smiling a little for perhaps the first time in his life, "if he stuck it out really far, then we could all catch hold of it and start pulling. And if we pulled hard enough, we could turn him inside out and he would have a new skin!"
There was a pause while the others considered this interesting proposal.
♥ The Centipede was dancing around the deck and turning somersaults in the air and singing at the top of his voice:
"Oh, hooray for the storm and the rain!
I can move! I don't feel any pain!
And now I'm a pest,
I'm the biggest and best,
The most marvelous pest once again!
"Oh, do shut up," the Old-Green-Grasshopper said.
"Look at me!" cried the Centipede.
"Look at ME! I am freed! I am freed!
Not a scratch nor a bruise nor a bleed!
To his grave this fine gent
They all thought they had sent
And I very near went!
Oh, I VERY near went!
But they cent quite the wrong Centipede!"
♥ "You know what those buildings are?" shouted James, jumping up and down with excitement. "Those are skyscrapers! So this must be America! And that, my friends, means that we have crossed the Atlantic Ocean overnight!"
♥ Round and round and upside down went the peach as it plummeted toward the earth, and they were all clinging desperately to the stem to save themselves from being flung into space.
Faster and faster it fell. Down and down and down, tracing closer and closer to the houses and streets below, where it would surely smash into a million pieces when it hit. And all the way long Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, and along all the other streets in the City, people who had not yet reached the underground shelters looked up and saw it coming, and they stopped running sand stood there staring in a sort of stupor at what they thought was the biggest bomb in all the world falling out of the sky onto their heads. A few women screamed. Others knelt down on the sidewalks and began praying aloud. Strong men turned to one another and said things like, "I guess this is it, Joe," and "Good-by, everybody, good-by." And for the next thirty seconds the whole City held its breath, waiting for the end to come.
♥ And it was precisely onto the top of this needle that the peach fell!
There was a squelch. The needle went in deep. And suddenly-there was the giant peach, caught and spiked upon the very pinnacle of the Empire State Building.
♥ Suddenly, the great brown head of the Centipede appeared over the side of the peach. His black eyes, as large and round as two marbles, glared down at the policemen and the firemen below. Then his monstrous ugly face broke into a wide grin.
The policemen and the firemen all started shouting at once. "Look out!" they cried. "It's a Dragon!"
"It's not a Dragon! It's a Wampus!"
"It's a Gorgon!"
"It's a Sea-serpent!"
"It's a Prock!"
"It's a Manticore!"
Three firemen and five policemen fainted and had to be carried away.
"It's a Snozzwanger!" cried the Chief of Police.
"It's a Whangdoodle!" yelled the Head of the Fire Department.
The Centipede kept on grinning. He seemed to be enjoying enormously the commotion that he was causing.
..At this point, the Old-Green-Grasshopper poked his huge green head over the side of the peach, alongside the Centipede's Six more big strong men fainted when they saw him.
"That one's an Oinck!" screamed the Head of the Fire Department. "I just know it's an Oinck!"
"Or a Cockatrice!" yelled the Chief of Police.
..Then Miss Spider's large black murderous-looking head, which to a stranger was probably the most terrifying of all, appeared next to the Grasshopper's.
"Snakes and ladders!" yelled the Head of the Fire Department. "We are finished now! It's a giant Scorpula!"
"It's worse than that!" cried the Chief of Police. "It's a vermicious Knid! Oh, just look at its vermicious gruesome face!"
"Is that the kind that eats fully-grown men for breakfast?" the Head of the Fire Department asked, going white as a sheet.
"I'm afraid it is," the Chief of Police answered,
"Oh, please why doesn't someone help us to get down from here?" Miss Spider called out. "It's making me giddy."
..Soon there were no less than seven large fantastic faces peering down over the side of the peach-the Centipede's, the Old-Green-Grasshopper's, Miss Spider's, the Earthworm's, the Ladybug's, the Silkworm's, and the Glow-worm's. And a sort of panic was beginning to break out among the firemen and the policemen on the rooftop.
Then, all at once, the panic stopped and a great gasp of astonishment went up all around. For now, a small boy was seen to be standing up there beside the other creatures. His hair was blowing in the wind, and he was laughing and waving and calling out, "Hello, everybody! Hello!"
♥ "My friends, this is the Centipede, and let me make it known
He is so sweet and gentle that (although he's overgrown)
The Queen of Spain, again and again, has summoned him by phone
To baby-sit and sing and knit and be a chaperone
When nurse is off and all the royal children are alone."
("Small wonder," said a Fireman, "they're no longer on the throne.")
"The Earthworm, on the other hand,"
Said James, beginning to expand,
"Is great for digging up the land
And making old soils newer.
Moreover, you should understand
He would be absolutely grand
For digging subway tunnels and
For making you a sewer."
(The Earthworm blushed and beamed with pride.
Miss Spider clapped and cheered and cried,
"Could any words be truer?")
"And the Grasshopper, ladies and gents, is a boon
In millions and millions of ways.
You have only to ask him to give you a tune
And he plays and he plays and he plays.
As a toy for your children he's perfectly sweet;
There's nothing so good in the shops-
You've only to tickle the soles of his feet
And he hops and he hops and he hops."
("He can't be very fierce!" exclaimed
The head of all the Cops.)
"And now without excuse
I'd like to introduce
This charming Glow-worm, lover of simplicity.
She is easy to install
On your ceiling or your wall,
And although this smacks a bit of eccentricity,
It's really rather clever
For thereafter you will never
You will NEVER NEVER NEVER
Have the slightest need for using electricity."
(At which, no less than fifty-two
Policemen cried, "If this is true
That creature get some fabulous publicity!")
"And here we have Miss Spider
With a mile of thread inside her
Who has personally requested me to say
That she's NEVER met Miss Muffet
On her charming little tuffet-
If she had she'd NOT have frightened her away.
Should her looks sometimes alarm you
Then I don't think it would harm you
To repeat at least a hundred times a day:
"I must NEVER kill a spider
I must only help and guide her
And invite her in the nursery to play."
(And Police all nodded slightly,
And the Firemen smiled politely,
And about a dozen people cried, "Hooray!")
"And here's my darling Ladybug, so beautiful, so kind,
My greatest comfort since this trip began.
She has four hundred children and she's left them all behind,
But they're coming on the next peach if they can."
(The Cops cried, "She's entrancing!"
All the Firemen started dancing,
And the crowds all started cheering to a man!)
"And now, the Silkworm," James went on,
"Whose silk will bear comparison
With all the greatest silks there are
In Rome and Philadelphia.
If you would search the whole world through
From Paraguay to Timbuctoo
I don't think you would find one bit
Of silk that could compare with it.
Even the shops in Singapore
Don't have the stuff. And what is more,
This silkworm had, I'll have you know,
The honor, not so long ago,
To spin and weave and sew and press
The Queen of England's wedding dress.
And she'd already made and sent
A waistcoat for your President."
(Well, good for her!" the Cops cried out,
And all at once a mighty shout
Went up around the Empire State,
"Let's get them down at once! Why WAIT?")
♥ The children jumped up onto the truck and swarmed like ants all over the giant peach, eating and eating to their hearts' content. And as the news of what was happening spread quickly from street to street, more and more boys and girls came running from all directions to join the feast. Soon, there was a trail of children a mile long chasing after the peach as it proceeded slowly up Fifth Avenue. Really, it was a fantastic sight. To some people it looked as though the Pied Piper of Hamelin had suddenly descended upon New York. And to James, who had never dreamed that there could be so many children as this in the world, it was the most marvelous thing that had ever happened.
By the time the procession was over, the whole gigantic fruit had been completely eaten up, and only the big brown stone in the middle, licked clean and shiny by ten thousands eager little tongues, was left standing on the truck.
♥ And thus the journey ended. But the travelers lived on.
♥ The Earthworm, with his lovely pink skin, was employed by a company that made women's face creams to speak commercials on television.
The Silkworm and Miss Spider, after they had both been taught to make nylon thread instead of silk, set up a factory together and made ropes for tightrope walkers.
The Glow-worm became the light inside the torch on the Statue of Liberty, and thus saved a grateful City from having to pay a huge electricity bill every year.
The Old-Green-Grasshopper became a member of the New York Symphony Orchestra, where his playing was greatly admired.
The Ladybug, who had been haunted all her life by the fear that her house was on fire and her children all gone, married the Head of the Fire Department and lived happily ever after.
♥ And as for the enormous peach stone-it was set up permanently in a place of honor in Central Park and became a famous monument. But it wads not only a famous monument. It was also a famous house. And inside the famous house there lived a famous person-
JAMES HENRY TROTTER
himself.
..Every day of the week, hundreds and hundreds of children from far and near came pouring into the City to see the marvelous peach stone in the Park. And James Henry Trotter, who once, if you remember, had been the saddest and loneliest little boy that you could find, now had all the friends and playmates in the world. And because so many of them were always begging him to tell and tell again the story of his adventures on the peach, he thought it would be nice if one day he sat down and wrote it as a book.
So he did.
And that is what you have just finished reading.
